Fletcherism: What It Is; Or, How I Became Young at SixtyFletcher, Horace
Science
Fletcherism: What It Is; Or, How I Became Young at Sixty
Fletcher, Horace
Mastication; Nutrition
The sorry dipsomaniac was sobered-up in the usual way and instructed
in the process of Fletcherizing. He took kindly to it, as all do who
have been dietetic sinners, and the result was the same as with the
beery and bleery tramp mentioned in the early part of this chapter. He
lost his "taste" for "booze" and continued the incident by becoming a
worker on the place and a sound temperance example.
Here is a revelation worth while to the missionary workers. Their
field of service was the mountain districts of their State and the
neighbouring State of North Carolina, which are famous for their
moonshine whisky stills. The whisky distilled in the mountains does
not pay any Internal Revenue tax if it can be avoided, and hence the
stills are hidden in deep forests and operated by the light of the
moon. The inhabitants of these lawless regions are the poorest of the
poor and call down the contempt of the negroes. They are called "poor
white trash," and moonshine whisky that will kill at fifty yards is
responsible for much of the poverty and trashiness. They are as good
marks for missionary sympathy as any "heathen" the world can produce
anywhere. I have been among them all and I assure you, these listless
and luckless inebriates of the poor white trash regions are the most
pitiable.
FLETCHERISM AS FIRST AID
As soon as the incident of the victim of delirium tremens had been
measured at its full significance, it dawned upon the missionaries
that Fletcherism was to be their most potent assistant in curing
the mountaineers of their vices and preparing them for religious
instruction. They were won over to the ideal of Dietetic Corpoculture
as "First Aid to the Injured" in establishing Temperance on a sound
basis.
Thus it was that the graduated missionaries introduced themselves
to their charges by building simple ovens of road-side stones in
rail-fence corners, as field surveyors might do, and invited those who
came along to feed with them.
There is never any trouble in securing guests at a feed anywhere,
and it is extremely easy among the poor to whom free food means less
work and more leisure. It is easy, too, to get the ears and attention
of guests at meals who would like to be invited again. It is also
easy to teach Fletcherizing to youthful dinner-guests, as Madame La
Marquise de Chamberay and I found out in connection with our East Side
investigation in New York.[O]
[O] This reference is to an unique experiment in New York, account
of which will sometime be published under the title of "Parties of
Politeness," a name suggested by the little guests themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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